So if James Bond gets shown on TV in Britain, his Aston Martin is simply a really cool luxury sports car?

Sweet... I don't want to be cold hearted but I will. This might be killing two birds with one stone. 1) being -private luxury crack smoking room. That's what's gonna happen... Maybe some showering... Doesn't matter to me though, the bums stink, the BART stinks, the whole downtown area of SF smells like a huge crack alcohol shit storm for being such an "affluent" city. I think this was well intended but I don't trust the "non-profits" around here especially in this "app" bubble. "Give me a huge grant because I have like the most astonishingly brilliant idea blah blah blah (pockets 25% of grant for outrageous rent costs)."

By 1st world standards, it's doable by almost anyone with a half decent job.

By global standards, being able to not work for anything longer than a few days is the height of luxury, nevermind being able to leave your country.

Face=>Palm

So, you quote the same hyper partisan types of 'media' Fox uses and claim to not know about Fox at all...oh really. That's an impressive blindness to a political giant not only here, but in your country as well.

Yes, red herring. I'm not bothering with your over abundance of partisan right wing sites, but the one I did randomly check said almost exactly what I said, that they had found NOTHING illegal and probably could never prosecute even if they did because they could not prove she knew it was illegal, but more likely what she did wasn't illegal or improper at the time she emailed from/to her private server. I'm sure the rest told you what you say they did read in the right light...but you don't understand it's all BS. How do I know? No charges. If/when they ever found anything substantive, there will be charges pending the next day and republicans on every channel dancing a jig. Since there aren't, I know there's nothing there.

Your smattering of anti-socialist sites mean nothing. No one said socialism was perfect, just that it's part of society and railing against any instance you can identify is just plain silly. Too much socialism without incentive for production is never a good idea...but none at all is Mad Max, where your precious degree won't be helping save you from the gas boys.

Again, more crazed right wing articles making claims against the ACA mean...what? Nothing. It's survived every challenge so far, and hundreds of attempts to repeal it. It's alive and well, contrary to what you've apparently read. It could certainly be better, but obstructionists would have nothing of 'single payer' and many states have done all they can to sabotage it.

Now for Trump...not a single one of those ideas is anything more than laughable.
1. Good luck with just 'not letting any more in'. You'll need to put the entire army on the borders, and the navy off shore to even come close. Won't happen in any way. The borders and shores are too large to patrol or wall off, much less both.
2. What free Federal resources do you think exist that can round up 11 million people and move them across a border? They don't exist, and would cost the entire GDP to try if it went smoothly...and it wouldn't. And it ignores the millions of legal children left behind which would cost billions-trillions more to take care of poorly. It's just laughable.
3. Smile because you just ate a tasty turd Trump told you was the best, most luxurious chocolate mousse.
Uncontrolled immigration is an issue, but not one easily solved, certainly not with his outrageously expensive plans.

Mexico building a wall because we illegally stop trading with them? (we have a binding trade agreement that precludes any such thing by law) You've got to be kidding. First, can't and won't ever happen, it would cost us trillions to replace/lose the products and trade that come from Mexico, if we could. Second, as I mentioned, illegal. Third, what happens when other nations side with Mexico, who's being illegally and outrageously bullied and blackmailed by the US, and stop trade with us too...like China? The plan is incredibly short sighted and given no thought at all, he just assumes that if we push, they'll all lie down and cry uncle. That's not how the world works.

You claim to have a degree and work for a bank, but you have at least twice tried to pin the entire debt on Obama. Perhaps you don't understand that the debt was about 12 trillion when he took office with the economy in the toilet thanks to the kinds of ideas you support? Our last president, a "conservative" far more than doubled the debt, and took a budget surplus and made it a HUGE deficit (source-https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo5.htm) and those numbers were while keeping two wars 'off the books' that are now being paid for. EDIT: and Obama has taken an enormous deficit and shrunk it precipitously while also turning the economy around...the right way (yeah, the last pres. turned it around too) Don't get it twisted...I'm pretty disappointed in Obama, I was from the first term, but because he didn't go much farther, not because of what he did get done.

Trump's the Republican second place runner...among republicans willing to answer presidential poll questions a year before the election. He's completely toast in a general election, even if he managed to get the other 76+% of republicans to vote for him (hint...he won't), he won't get any independents.

Vulgar language?!? I re-read my entire post, and not a single vulgar word IMO. One abbreviation of a vulgar word. You have GOT to be kidding me about that. If not, wow...get off the internet NOW and never come back, it's SO not for you. ;-)

t's possible to love someone
And not treat them in the way that you want
It's possible to see your eyes
Be the devil in disguise with another front
And, it's possible to change this world
Revolutionise the boys and girls
It's possible to educate
The next generation that will rule the world someday

The changing times of the 21st century
Means nothing to me cos I would rather be
At the beginning of time, earth would be mine
Living in luxury
Discovering a world out there
Believing in the sun earth water and air
Take me there so I could see the world bloom
Standing on a sea cliff howling at the moon
Creating a world for the open minded
A unique perception of truth inside it
I know we could find it
It's just a matter of where and when we collectively decide it
The world is not a vicious place
It's just the way we've been raised
Discovering time and space
I know that we could make a change
Rearrange the way that we appreciate the world today

It's possible to love someone..

Now as i start to put my mind into words
I stall I fall I'm loosing it all, my inhibitions
The thought of wasting a way
The fact that the music's at a place not far away
Yet I stray and stick to my world
In love with my life my beliefs and a girl
Is it luck that I love this crazy place, the human race?
Don't get me wrong I still think we could change
But this life and the fact that time exists
And were here and we don't come equipped with it all
Half the fun is learning and I'm having a ball
While the world keeps turning my role is small
But I'll make a change
I hope you're feeling the same way
I hope you're seeing what I say

It's possible to love someone..

In this concrete jungle we live
Our survival is love that we give
Now my instinct is guiding my way
It's true what they say
The world is your chance to create

Honk! ... Astin Hewitson sounds like a luxury car so here's where I race in to wish you a sporty, happy birthday with many more to transpire on the road of life

Very interesting, but I disagree with one aspect of what she is saying:

Yes, we're all sort of ignorant blank slates at that age (college entry). But she is suggesting that professors / instructors / parents / etc. are or should be responsible for curing us of that. I think that is bunk. Life itself, and in particular being responsible for one's own life, is what cures us of that ignorance.

Society tells all these kids that they cannot and will not accomplish anything without having a college education -- WAY more than it ever did in the past. A big percentage take that to heart, and therefore stay under the sheltered wing of their parents longer because they feel that they MUST.

I think once they get out into the real world, that ignorance and idealism will get quickly tempered with a dose of pragmatism. Being hyper-PC seems less important when you've got to work a double shift to pay your rent or buy luxuries like food. ...Or pay off staggering amounts of student loan debt.

First off, the city is already a powder-keg over segregationist tactics that were employed by the predominantly white city government to prevent affordable housing for lower income residents in the affluent parts of town.

http://www.ibtimes.com/mckinney-north-texas-city-center-pool-party-video-controversy-was-sued-over-housing-1955995

Now, the pool was in a upper crust luxury community and to celebrate the end of the school year, quite a few non-whites obtained passes to the pool. It was not until a bunch of the adult white residents of the community started calling in reports of fights and trespassing (people without passes).

These same nice white folk made the visitors feel wanted by throwing out racist comments "Several adults told the black teens to go back to their “Section 8 [public] housing” developments."

Now, the white kid who took the video, and who was not thrown to the ground by the police (he said they basically ignored him), said that most of the kids had passes and that the problems began before the few people who did not have passes showed up.

“I think a bunch of white parents were angry that a bunch of black kids who don’t live in the neighborhood were in the pool,” said Brooks, who is white.

Grace Stone, a white 14-year-old, told BuzzFeed News that when she and her friends objected to the racist comments about public housing an adult woman then became violent.

So the story is pretty much that a bunch of upper class white folks didn't like the 'darkies' getting uppity and brought the cops in. Everyone except the guy in the blue hat was released after being 'put in their place' by the cops for a while. Blue hat guy went to jail on charges of interference and evading arrest.

On Sunday afternoon, a sign left at the pool thanked McKinney police “for keeping us safe.” Because, as we all know, ethnic teens are the root of all evil and could hurt us white folks!

I doubt the cop loses his job, but he fucking should. Pulling a gun on unarmed teens is ludicrous. Putting your full weight on the back of a teen girl half your size and resting there for minutes is uncalled for. The jackass was PISSED that he tripped while chasing kids and felt he needed to get his own back.

As far as the community, they don't mind taking money from rich black folks to build a sports center, but don't let those uppity blacks think they can hang out there.

*promote

I don't know what dirt Blatter has on what politician, but how did he not get arrested?

The business around the Qatar world cup demonstrates perfectly how this horrible world works. Football is loved around the world, for the most part by peace loving individuals who believe in fair play and good sportsmanship.

Yet somehow, the money that we pay to watch football (and the money that the advertisers pay for the privilege selling us things while we watch) was used to set up a football competition in a country at a time when football is not playable. To ensure this impossible spectacle takes place, tens of thousands of low paid (and many unpaid for years at a time) migrants were moved into desolate infested squats in order to provide the slave labour to build the beautifully designed and wonderfully engineered, air conditioned stadia that we will all sit in or otherwise experience, in comfort, at the expense of all of those poor people.

And yet almost every one of us would be outraged and moved to action at the possibility of a person being exploited in our name.

They investigated themselves, they found themselves to be acting in an exemplary fashion. If anyone is punished for corruption, they will eventually return to their normal life of luxury after a brief stint out in the cold, and possibly be rehired under an umbrella company or to a lower-profile position of equal importance.

The same happened with the banks, the same happens with our politicians and their spiderweb of connections in big business and finance. Fuck capitalism. We need something new.

SUVs are not designed to be used as a tool like an Unimog. SUVs are designed to be an attractive luxury mobile for urban consumers, not forest workers.

One more thought that I had:

Before Tesla, electric cars were niche marketed as adequate. In the sense that if you were a person very highly motivated to be "green", you could get one, drive around short distances, and in general enjoy a small subset of the versatility of an internal combustion gas guzzling car. You could get by, but in general life with an electric car was a step back from life with a gas car.

The reason Tesla is amazing is that it flipped that on its head. You're not sacrificing anything, you don't need an attitude of "I can use a bit less and take one for the team" for a Tesla to appeal to you. Everything I watch about the Model S says it is a fast, high-performance, fun to drive, luxurious car -- objectively BETTER than a similarly priced gas-powered car to most users (who can afford one, but that will include more and more people over time).


Same thing goes for home solar and other "green energy". Adoption rates are NEVER going to soar when solar is "adequate". And then only adequate if you make very big lifestyle changes like cutting back on heating and cooling, using low-draw appliances, etc. etc.

But as Tesla is doing to cars, maybe this can do to energy. Musk is saying NO, you don't have to cut back. You don't have to settle for less. You don't have to take one for the team. Install some (currently fairly expensive) solar panels and 1, 2, or however many of our power packs, and you can have a BETTER experience than being on the grid, paying high bills every month and dealing with the occasional outage, etc.

I guarantee that pitch will do more to push the adoption of green energy than 10 years of Al Gore living in a mansion and flying around constantly on a private jet to give $100,000 lectures explaining why everybody else needs to cut back or we're all going to melt...

@ChaosEngine

Everything @newtboy said. I think you're exaggerating just a tad. You're not going to build a PC that runs newly released games at 1080p at 60fps and also includes a blu-ray drive , 500 GB HD, and wireless motion sensitive controller for under $400 US (current price of PS4 on US Amazon). Plus, you're almost certainly going to have to buy a 1080p monitor (since most people don't do their computing on their TV or keep their tower case in the living room), which will set you back $200 minimum even for a cheap one that's likely to ghost.

As far as games go, nearly EVERY major release will be on all platforms and in fact will likely come out on console first (GTA V). Sure, some kickstarter stuff like Pillars of Eternity won't be available but it works both ways--you won't get some awesome console exclusives on the PC (Mario Kart, Little Big Planet, etc.) either.

Plus as newtboy mentioned, you can rent and sell console games. Yeah, PC games drop to much lower price points as they get older (I usually pick up all the good stuff I missed at $3-5 during Steam sales) but reselling isn't an option for most stuff (yet). You can mod most PC games, though, so that's a plus for them.

Look, I play 90% of my games on my gaming PC. That's because I have the time and money to do so. I don't understand the attitude of looking down on people who don't have those luxuries or who don't want to spend the prerequisite time required pouring over tech forums, price comparing at hardware vendors websites like Newegg, and downloading proper drivers just to build a gaming PC on the cheap when they can just go to a store down the road and pick up something comparable with virtually no effort.

Seriously, why would he refer to a beautiful animal by the term best used for humans.

I'm kidding, I'm kidding. I wouldn't talk or even refer to a human in any serious fashion, let alone bestow the luxurious pronoun bestowed upon objects which lack suffering. Anyone ever heard of a drama tree? Or a bench that requires medication?

Notice how the duchebaggery increased in proportion with the price of the cars.

Some cheap cars tried to make it through, but quickly backed off and even apologized. The luxury model cars all stopped to argue, threaten, and/or tried to run people over. (although the male/female divide was even greater)

We have the luxury of sitting at our keyboards knowing the intentions and full context of this dancer’s actions. The cop in the driver’s seat and those in front of the van would not have the same luxury, it was happening in real time. I don’t exactly applaud the policemen’s response but given full context I can pretty much understand it. But I won’t get sucked into the usual Michael Moore level of debate -“cops BAD citizens GOOD”

If this dancer wants to play the passive/aggressive thumb-sucker and ignore current events and say “golly, I was just dancing” then he deserves to get the stupid shoved right out of him. Although I don’t think that’s possible. Go spread your joy with some small town police force, maybe they will shake their heads and chuckle while you flash your roll of Mentos.